The Mac is back! Apple ships most MacBooks ever

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WWCC22: The new M2 MacBook Air comes in four colors.
The July launch of the M2 MacBook Air helped propel Apple's to new heights in notebook shipments.
Photo: Apple

Apple shipped a record number of MacBooks during the September quarter, a whopping 26% increase over the same period of 2021, according to a market-analysis firm. That’s more than the company has ever shipped in a single quarter.

At the same time, Windows notebook-makers saw their shipments decline.

Apple just had the ‘best MacBook quarter ever’

Apple announced recently that revenue from Mac sales during the July-through September period shot up 25% annually. But Cupertino does not reveal how many Macs it ships each quarter, and certainly doesn’t break it out by type of device. It is therefore up to market analysts to estimate the figure.

Strategy Analytics reports that Apple’s MacBook total hit 8.1 million in Q3 2022, up from 6.4 million in the same quarter of last year.

“Apple had a great quarter for MacBook PCs shipments and revenue, as they managed to deliver backlog orders which were mainly upgrades, plus MacBooks with the new M2 chipset driving sales across several regions,” said Chirag Upadhyay, an analyst with Strategy Analytics.

Horace Dediu, an analyst with Asymco, concurs and noted via Twitter that “I’m estimating 8.048 million units at $1430 average price. This is an all-time unit and revenue record.”

While certainly a cause for celebration, Apple was coming off a terrible Q2. It shipped only 4.8 million macOS notebooks the June quarter, an annual decline of 13%. As Upadhyay pointed out, some of Q3’s jump in shipments is from backordered MacBooks finally being delivered.

Windows notebook-makers struggle

The top makers of Windows-based notebooks had their own problems in Q2 2022 but did not see an Apple-like rebound in Q3. Instead, their shipments all dropped by double digits compared to the same period of 2021.

Lenovo notebook shipments saw a year-over-year decline of 16%, according to Strategy Analytics. HP shipments dropped 32%, Dell’s dropped 25% and Asus shipments were 16% lower.

In Q3 of last year, Apple made up 10% of the global tablet market. In Q3 2022, its share rose to 14%.

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